I'm with you MRJ. I just posted the following to the blog entry in today's startribune regarding academic achievement by the WCHA Mens and Womens hockey teams (ZERO Gopher men!):
"What is going on w/my Gopher squad? I was such a big fan of the don (how you could you not be w/two national titles in back to back years), but I’m starting to really question things there. It’s starting to make me think back to Woog’s last few years where none of the recruits ever got better. They either stayed the same, or degressed. That’s what appears to be happening nowadays. I don’t have a problem w/them getting the top-end talent, those players that may sign w/NHL teams after their first or second year. I do have a problem with the other guys not developing into better players as they get further along in their college careers. Barribal, Fischer, Lucia, Anderson, Flynn, White (only a sophomore)… All decent players, but I don’t know if they are any better then they were a year or two ago.
It seems we're getting back to the late 90’s when it appeared the primary goal of some of those guys was to just get to the U, not to get there and win. It also seems these guys assume they will get better just by getting older, but that clearly isn’t the case. I just don’t see the grit and determination that guys like Johnny Pohl, Jordan Leopold, Paul Martin, and Keith Ballard brought to the ice.
And those guys were good students too! Now we don’t even have that to hang our hats on!
It’s really disappointing what is going on here."